1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns creating a locally managed instance of a printer on a workstation which communicates to the printer over a peer-to-peer network. More particularly, the present invention concerns creating a locally managed instance of the printer by inputting an identifier of the printer, automatically obtaining and installing printer configuration information and print driver information in response to the input identifier, and creating the locally managed instance of the printer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, printer instances are created in a windows operating system for either server based printers or local printers. As described below, a server based printer means a printer that is installed on a server and thus utilizes server based printing operations. A local printer means a printer installed on a network that communicates with a workstation via peer-to-peer communication rather than via a server. As such, the local printer can be managed locally by, for example, changing printer configuration properties of the printer within an instance of the printer created in the windows registry.
One example of creating a printer instance of a server based printer is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,692,111 to Marbry et al. (hereinafter referred to as the “'111 patent”). In the '111 patent, when a printer is first installed on a network, the printer is configured by a network administrator and printer configuration information and print driver information are stored in a network bindery of a server. Once the printer is installed on the server by the network administrator, a user can add the printer in a windows registry of a workstation in order to be able to print to the printer.
According to the '111 patent, to add a new server based printer in the windows registry, a user browses the network and selects the server based printer that he/she wants to print to. Upon selecting the server based printer, printer configuration files and print driver files for the selected printer are retrieved from the network bindery and are installed on the user's workstation, after which an instance of the server based printer is created in the user's windows registry. However, management of the printer configuration in the server based instance is governed by the configuration as set by the network administrator. That is, the configuration information obtained from the network bindery as set by the administrator determines the configuration of the printer in the server based instance. Accordingly, the user is generally not able to change the configuration of the server based printer to be different from those set by the administrator, particularly in operating systems that provide enhanced security features, such as Microsoft® Windows 2000® or Windows NT 4.0 and later versions of windows operating systems.
Another method of creating a printer instance in a windows registry is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,184,998 B1 to Tebeka (hereinafter referred to as the “'998 patent”). In the '998 patent, a user creates a copy of an instance of a printer that has already been installed in the windows registry. The copied instance can then be manipulated to change various settings, such as the paper size, number of copies, graphics options, etc. As a result, a user can create multiple instances of the same printer, with each instance having different settings so that the user can print to the same printer by merely selecting the appropriate printer instance, thus obviating the need to change the settings each time the user wants to print. However, in the '998 patent's approach, a printer instance must first be created before the user can create a copy of the instance. As such, the original instance, which is generally installed as that described above for server based printers or as described below for local printers, as well as the copied instance, suffer from the same problems as described above and below. Namely, the printer configuration is governed by the settings as determined by the network administrator (server based printers) and the initial installation of the printer is time consuming and confusing for the user (local printers).
Creating an instance of a local printer has been known to be performed in the following manner. First, the user selects an Add Printer option in a Printers folder of the windows operating system. The user is prompted to select an option to add either a local printer or a network printer. If the user selects the local printer option, the user is prompted to input various information, such as to select the printer, select the type of printer, input the name of a port to be created for communication with the printer, to input the printer's name, to select a print driver for the printer, etc. Once the user has successfully navigated through the series of windows to add the local printer, configuration files and print driver files for the selected printer are obtained, either directly from the operating system itself or by prompting the user to identify a disk, CD-ROM or other storage medium from which the files can be obtained. Finally, an instance of the local printer is created in the windows registry.
As can readily be seen, such a conventional procedure is time consuming and can be confusing for the user. As such, many users who may not be familiar with this process may not be able to successfully navigate through the steps required to create the printer instance. Additionally, the user may input information which is not necessarily the best for the printer instance being created, even though the input information may be sufficient to successfully create the printer instance. For example, the user may be requested to select one of several print drivers that are available for the printer. The user may select one of the print drivers that is sufficient to install the printer and create the printer instance, but which may not necessarily be the best print driver to provide optimum performance. As a result, inefficiencies may result that significantly slow down the printing process, or that result in undesirable printouts.
Of course, a user could create an instance of a local printer by utilizing the '998 patent's approach of merely copying a printer instance that has already been created. However, it can readily be seen that the original instance of the local printer must be created first and therefore, the '998 patent's approach does little to overcome the problems of the foregoing conventional technique for creating an instance of a local printer.
It can also be readily recognized that a process similar to the foregoing installation of a local printer is a technique readily utilized for installation of virtual printers. For instance, to install a virtual printer such as Kinkos'® file prep tool, a user logs on to the Kinkos® website and selects an option to install the Kinkos'® file prep tool virtual printer. After navigating through various windows such as those described above, the virtual printer is installed and an instance of the virtual printer is created in the windows registry. Accordingly, the process for creating instances of virtual printers suffers from the same problems as described above for creating instances of local printers.